Emergency Pantry Update

Since starting this project in April I've been buying extra nonperishable food weekly to add to our new emergency pantry. I have about an extra month's worth stored now. We're also trying different canned foods to see what they're like, and decide if we really want to live on them possibly for months. Hormel canned chili, for example, was surprisingly good -- we agreed we'd eat it even in non-emergency situations when I don't have time to make chili from scratch. Spam roasted turkey tastes just like the ham variety (and all Spam has a lot of salt in it.)

In addition to food I've invested in nonfat dry milk, baking soda and powder, salt, yeast and other ingredients I'd need for baking. Thanks to the military I can make almost anything in a skillet over a campfire, including flat bread, cornbread, pizza and rolls.

The most challenging part of this project has been finding enough variety. If you've tried one Chef Boyardee pasta, for example, you've basically tasted them all. My finicky man also dislikes a lot of canned foods. But I'm persuading him to stretch his horizons a little and try some new things by reminding him of our childhood days, when our cash-strapped mothers fed us canned everything. Anyway, I'm on target to complete my storage project by the beginning of hurricane season, which is when I'll decide if I want to keep adding more food for the future.

I still have some work to do. The next step is to reorganize what I have (versus shoving it in the cabinets) and label the front of each product with the expiration date, and then create a computer inventory list by item type and another copy by expiration date, so we can keep track of what we have and when we need to rotate it into the regular pantry.

Comments

Maria Zannini said…

Don't forget the pups. Mine are bigger than yours, but we generally keep two bags in reserve and one in use.That barely covers 3 months but that's all the room we have for large bags.

May 13, 2024 at 7:59 AM

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Valerean

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